Top rankings for North West Company

Wikipedia article:

Map showing all locations mentioned on Wikipedia article:

The
North West Company was a fur trading business
headquartered in Montreal from 1779 to
1821. It competed with increasing success against the
Hudson's Bay Company in what
was to become Western Canada. With
great wealth at stake, tensions between the companies increased to
the point where several minor armed skirmishes broke out, and the
two companies were forced to merge.

Frobisher-MacTavish deal

The death of Benjamin Frobisher opened the door to a takeover of
the North West Company by Simon McTavish, who made a deal with
Frobisher's surviving brother Joseph. The firm of McTavish,
Frobisher and Company, founded in November 1787, effectively
controlled eleven of the company’s twenty outstanding shares. At
the time the company consisted of 23 partners, but "its staff of
Agents, factors, clerks, guides, interpreters, more commonly known
todayqas Métis or voyageurs
amounted to 2000 people." In addition to Alexander Mackenzie, this
group included AmericansPeter Pond and Alexander Henry. Further
reorganizations of the partnership occurred in 1795 and 1802, the
shares being subdivided each time to provide for more and more
wintering partners.

Vertical integration of the business was completed in 1792, when
Simon McTavish and John Fraser formed a London house to supply
trade goods and market the furs, McTavish, Fraser and Company.
While the organization and capitalization of the North West Company
came from Anglo-Quebecers, both Simon
McTavish and Joseph Frobisher married French Canadians. Numerous French Canadians
played key roles in the operations both in the building,
management, and shareholding of the various trading posts scattered
throughout the country, as well numbering among the
voyageurs involved in the actual trading with
natives.

In the northwest, the Company expanded its operations as far north
as Great Bear Lake, and westwards beyond the Rocky Mountains.
For
several years, they tried to sell furs directly to China, using
American ships to avoid the British East India Company's monopoly,
but little profit was made there.The company also
expanded into the American Northwest
Territory, where in 1795 Jacques
Vieau established a trading post in Milwaukee,
Wisconsin, with outposts at Kewaunee,
Manitowoc, and Sheboygan, all on
Lake
Michigan.In 1796,
to better position themselves in the increasingly global market,
where politics played a major role, the North West Company briefly
established an agency in New York City.

Despite its efforts, the North West Company was at a distinct
disadvantage in competing for furs with the Hudson's Bay Company,
whose charter gave it a virtual monopoly in Rupert's Land, where the best furs came from.
The
company tried to persuade the British Parliament to change arrangements, at least so the North West
Company could obtain transit rights to ship goods to the west
needed for trading for furs. Simon McTavish made a personal
petition to Prime Minister William Pitt, but all requests were
refused.

Charlton island

A few years later, with no relief to the Hudson's Bay Company's
stranglehold, McTavish and his group decided to gamble.
They
organized an overland expedition from Montreal to James Bay and a second expedition by sea.In September 1803,
the overland party met the company's ship at Charlton
Island in what is now Nunavut Territory. There, they lay claim to the
region, inhabited by the Inuit, in the name of
the North West Company. This bold move caught the Hudson's Bay
Company off guard. In succeeding years it retaliated rather than
reaching a compromise, which McTavish had hoped might be
negotiated.

Late 18th/early 19th century

Simon McTavish brought several members of his family into the
company, but nepotism took a back seat to ability. His
brother-in-law, Charles
Chaboillez, oversaw the Lower Red River trading post. McTavish
also hired several cousins and his nephews William McGillivray and Duncan McGillivray to learn the business.
Over several years, William McGillivray demonstrated considerable
business acumen, and in 1788 he acquired the share owned by
Peter Pond when Pond chose to retire.
Soon after, he replaced his uncle as the Montreal agents'
representative at the annual meetings at Grand Portage.

Simon McTavish was an aggressive businessman who understood that
powerful forces in the business world were always ready to pounce
on any weakness. As such, his ambition and forceful positions
caused disagreements between him and some of the shareholders,
several of whom eventually left the North West Company during the
1790s. Some of these dissidents formed their own company, known
unofficially as the "XY Company" because of the mark they used on
their bales of furs. In 1799 this rival group started to trade in
some of the same areas as the North West Company. The XY Company
was greatly strengthened when Alexander Mackenzie joined it in
1801.

There was intense competition between the rivals. When Simon
McTavish died on July 6, 1804, the new head William McGillivray set
out to put an end to the five years' rivalry. It had escalated to a
point where the master of the North West Company post at Great Bear
Lake had been shot by an XY Company employee during a
quarrel. McGillivray was successful in putting together an
agreement with the XY Company in 1804. It stipulated that the old
North West Company partners held 75 per cent of the shares, and the
former XY Company partners the remaining 25 per cent. Alexander
Mackenzie was excluded from the new joint partnership.

Under William McGillivray, more success came during the first
decade of the 19th century as the North West Company expanded its
operating territory. Competition with the Hudson's Bay Company was
intense, however, and profit margins were squeezed. The North West
Company branch in New York City had allowed the Canadians to get
around the British East India
Company's monopoly and ship furs to the Chinese market. Cargo
ships owned by the North West Company conveniently sailed under the
American flag, and doing so meant continued collaboration with
John Jacob Astor.

However, Astor was as aggressive as Simon McTavish had been.
An
intense rivalry soon developed between him and William McGillivray
over the Oriental market and westerly expansion to unclaimed
territory in what is now the Columbia
River basin, in the present-day states of Washington and Oregon.Astoria's
Pacific Fur Company beat the
North West Company in an effort to found a post near the mouth of
the Columbia, Fort
Astoria. A collapse in the sea otter population and
the imminent possibility of British seizure of Astoria during the
War of 1812 led to its sale to the North
West Company in 1813, resulting in an awkward situation when the
HMS Racoon and its
Captain Black arrived and went through a ceremony of possession,
even though the fort was already ostensibly a British possession.
Due to
treaty complications of the Treaty of
Ghent requiring the return of seized assets, putative ownership
of the site was returned to the United States in 1817, although the
fort, renamed Fort George by the North West Company, continued to
operate until the Hudson's Bay Company's takeover and the
replacement of Fort Astoria by Fort Vancouver.

The
Canadian fur trade began to change in 1806, after Napoleon Bonaparte ordered the blockade
of the Baltic
Sea as part of the ongoing struggle between France and
Britain for world dominance. Britain was dependent for
almost all of its timber on the Baltic countries and on New
Hampshire and Massachusetts. By then, however, tensions had also
begun to escalate again between Britain and America, and in 1809
the American Government passed the Non-Intercourse Act, which effectively
brought about an almost complete cessation of trade between the two
countries. Britain then found itself totally dependent on her
Canadian colony for its timber needs, especially the great white
pine used for ships' masts. Almost overnight, timber and wood
products replaced fur as Canada's number one export. Fur remained
profitable, however, as it had a high value-to-bulk ratio, and in
an economy short of ready money was routinely used by Canadian
merchants to remit value to their London creditors.

Forced merger

By 1810 another crisis hit the fur industry, brought on by the
over-harvesting of animals, the beaver in
particular. The destruction of the North West Company
post at Sault
Ste.Marie by the Americans during the War of 1812 was a serious blow during an already
difficult time. All these events only intensified
competition, and when Thomas Douglas convinced
his fellow shareholders in the Hudson's Bay Company to grant him
the Selkirk Concession it marked
another in a series of events that would lead to the demise of the
North West Company. The Pemmican Proclamation, the ensuing
Battle of
Seven Oaks in 1816, and its violence, resulted in Lord Selkirk
arresting William McGillivray and several North West Company
proprietors, seizing their outpost property in Fort
William and charging them with responsibility for the
deaths of twenty-one people at Seven Oaks. Although this
matter was resolved by the authorities in Montreal, over the next
few years some of the wealthiest and most capable partners began to
leave the company, fearful of its future viability. The form of
nepotism within the company too had changed, from the strict values
of Simon McTavish to something that now was harming the business in
both its costs and morale of others.

By 1820, the company was issuing coinage, each coin representing
the value of one beaver pelt. However, the continued existence of
the North West Company was in great doubt, and shareholders had no
choice but to agree to a merger with their hated rival after
Henry Bathurst,
the Secretary of State
for War and the Colonies, ordered the companies to cease
hostilities. In July 1821, under more pressure from the British
government, which passed new regulations governing the fur trade in
British North America, a merger agreement was signed with the
Hudson's Bay Company, whereby the North West Company name
disappeared after more than forty years in existence. At the time
of the merger, the amalgamated company consisted of 97 trading
posts that had belonged to the North West Company and 76 that
belonged to the Hudson's Bay Company. George Simpson (1787-1860),
the Hudson's Bay Company Governor-in-Chief of Rupert's Land who became the Canadian head of
the northern division of the greatly enlarged business, made his
headquarters in the Montreal suburb of Lachine.

Personnel

Beyond the non-operating investors, these were some of the post
proprietors, clerks, interpreters, explorers and others of the
nearly 2,500 employed by the North West Company in 1799:

Athabaska:

John Finlay (proprietor), Simon Fraser, James MacKenzie,
Duncan Livingston, John Stuart, James
Porter, John Thompson, James MacDougall, G. F. Wintzel, John
Heinbrucks;

In addition, the North West Company is also a case example in
Oxford's John Roberts book The Modern
Firm.

Canada. Bill An Act to Incorporate the North West
Company. Ottawa: I.B. Taylor, 2004. ISBN 0659049937

Fox, William A. Archaeological Investigation of the North
West Company Great Hall Cellar, Fort William, 1976. Data box
research manuscript series, 348. [Toronto]: Ministry of Culture and
Recreation, Historical Planning and Research Branch, 1977.

Hoag, Donald R. Agents of the North West Company in the
Fond du Lac District. Duluth: The Author, 1981.

M'Gillivray, Duncan, and Arthur Silver Morton. The Journal
of Duncan M'Gillivray of the North West Company at Fort George on
the Saskatchewan, 1794-5. Toronto: Macmillan Co. of Canada,
1929.

Schwörer, Ute. The Reorganization of the Fur Trade of the
Hudson's Bay Company After the Merger with the North West Company,
1821 to 1826. Ottawa: National Library of Canada, 1988. ISBN
0315358122

Selkirk, Thomas Douglas. A Sketch of the British Fur Trade
in North America With Observations Relative to the North West
Company of Montreal. New-York: Printed for James Eastburn and
Co. [by] Clayton & Kingsland, 1818.

Wallace, W. Stewart. Documents Relating to the North West
Company. New York: Greenwood Press, 1968.